


Her Reputation Precedes Her

by battle_cat



Series: Together [32]
Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Plot with a wee bit of porn cause it's me, Politics, Sexual Content, Trade Deals, Weapons Kink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-03
Updated: 2017-07-03
Packaged: 2018-11-22 18:03:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,235
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11385492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/battle_cat/pseuds/battle_cat
Summary: Furiosa must negotiate a trade deal under less-than-ideal conditions. Max has a role to play.





	Her Reputation Precedes Her

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by YoukaiYume's "Imperator and her pitbull" drawings, particularly [two](http://youkaiyume.tumblr.com/post/159228951463/dont-talk-to-the-imperator-and-her-pitbull-ever) and [three](http://youkaiyume.tumblr.com/post/161187373603/dont-talk-to-the-imperator-and-her-pitbull-ever). Started as a smutty_arts prompt fill but ended up only marginally smutty.
> 
> Furiosa and Max's RPG-firing moment inspired by watching [these idiots](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLj4zaoMkRE).

The trade request comes at the worst possible time. The Citadel is still staggering out from under the shadow of fever—luckily with only a small number of dead, but with low supply levels and weakened crews.

Furiosa had held out until it seemed like everyone else was on the mend, and then succumbed sudden and hard. Of course that meant that Max was not far behind, but he’d burned through the disease in three days of intense fever while Furiosa had been bed-ridden for more than a week, too weak to summon even her usual ire at her body’s limitations. She’d coughed so hard she’d fractured a rib, on the side where the bone-handled knife had gone into her, which did nothing to improve her mood now that she was slowly recovering.

They’re lingering over some post-council chatter, Capable and Toast and Furiosa, when a twitchy scout, barely more than a pup, edges into the conference room. “F-for the Imperator,” he stammers, handing over a scribbled-upon scrap of brown paper and a long, thin object wrapped in stained burlap. Furiosa has tried to stop using the title but it clings like a stubborn grease stain.

“Oh fucking hell,” Furiosa snaps, staring at the paper. The scout flees despite Capable offering what she hopes is a friendly smile.

“Rusted-out pedestrian schlangers,” Furiosa hisses. “Had to be now…”

Capable glances at the sigil scratched on the paper with what looks like charcoal. It’s not a mark she recognizes.

“Red Dingos,” Furiosa explains. “Big scav tribe. Been a while.”

“Are they reliable?” Capable asks.

“Absolutely not.” Furiosa grits her teeth as she takes a deep breath in. “Mercenaries and thieves. But they find good stuff.”

She unwraps the object from the piece of burlap. It’s a metal tube the length of an arm, widening at one end to something the shape of a tightly furled flower bud. There’s some faded writing on the tube in an alphabet Capable can’t read.

Toast gives a low whistle, Furiosa an annoyed grunt.

“What is it?”

“It’s a rocket-propelled grenade,” Furiosa says. Capable quickly removes her hand from the table. “Won’t go off here,” Furiosa clarifies. “Has a safety cap.” She taps the end of the device. “You fire it out of a launcher.”

She picks it up with her flesh hand, examining it with easy familiarity. “Haven’t seen one in a long time. They must’ve found a cache somewhere.”

Capable knows the word _rocket_ from the books in the Vault and Miss Giddy’s explanations—they were the things that put the satellites up in space, but also something that could send a bomb where you wanted it to go. 

The Bullet Farm has rockets, and even some of the massive guns they call artillery, but they guard those things jealously. Their alliance with the New Citadel does not include supplying them. Capable doesn’t do war but even she understands enough to know that any explosive that can travel farther than a human can throw it is enormously valuable in the Wasteland.

The note on the unfolded piece of paper is short and to the point. _63 more like this + gun to fire. Will deal with new Citadel boss only._ Below that is a crude but understandable map that seems to show the route to a campsite south of Citadel territory.

“They mean me,” Furiosa says. “They’ll have a base camp where the tribe stays, and then a satellite camp not far off. That’s where you go deal.” She taps the spot on the map.

“You’re in no state to be going anywhere,” says Capable. “We’ll send a team representing the council. The Citadel doesn’t have just one boss anymore.”

Furiosa shakes her head. “Not safe. Me, they’ll deal with.”

“You can barely stand up.”

“They don’t know that.”

“They will if you try to fight for two seconds,” Toast quips.

Capable folds her arms. “Tell them we’re not interested, then.”

“But we _are_ interested,” says Toast. “This is something we don’t have and can’t get from the Bullet Farm.”

“And they know it,” says Furiosa. “They’re testing us. Seeing what the new leadership is like. Gotta go deal.”

“You are not going out there alone.”

“Didn’t say I would be alone.”

 

“Tighter,” she says, her shortened arm braced against the wall as he winds the strip of cloth around her bare torso.

He’s helping her wrap her ribs, even though Janey told her not to. She was going to do it whether he helped or not and it might as well be done right.

When she’s satisfied with the wrap she pulls her shirt on over it and starts strapping on her arm. She is too pale, still, her jaw clenched in a way he knows means she’s in pain but hiding it. When she smears the black greasepaint over her forehead and under her eyes she looks more like a skeleton than normal.

“These people, ah…” he says as she’s checking her weapons. “What’re we getting into?”

“They’re dick-measurers. They’ll be suspicious if I don’t try and push ‘em around some.” She gives her sidearm a final once-over and slides it into the thigh holster on her right side.

Max grunts, because he knows the type, and he knows that Furiosa is not the kind to stand back and let someone else do her violence for her, same as he knows she had to stop halfway up a flight of steps this morning to keep from passing out.

Her gaze meets his for a second, a quick acknowledgment before she turns back to loading the flare gun that will go into the holster on her other side. “I have an idea,” she says.

 

She looks hard, something subtle shifted in the line of her shoulders and the set of her jaw as she drives the new rig, bracketed by as light a crew of outrider vehicles as she felt she could get away with. Half the War Boys are still too weak to fight, and the ones that aren’t are precious. In the cab of the rig, it’s just the two of them.

He’s seen her humming with battle energy before, but this frequency is different. It’s not the raw fury she unleashed on him in the sand beside the War Rig, but something harsher, colder, a calm assurance of superiority. This is her Imperator self.

She says hardly anything until they cross the southern edge of Citadel territory, heading to the no-man’s-land where the tribe has staked their camp. His gaze keeps flicking to her in between scanning the horizon. They have…well, _plan_ is maybe going a bit far, but they have an angle at least, and it’s far from the worst idea he’s ever been part of, but he wasn’t quite prepared for the way she’s subtly shifted everything about her presence. He’s not sure how he’s supposed to fit against this version of her.

They leave the outrider vehicles waiting behind a dune, as close to the Red Dingo camp as they can manage, with strict instructions not to approach unless they see a signal flare. Then it’s just the two of them, driving in silence under the snap of the Citadel banners atop the rig, Joe’s red and black replaced with green.

The Red Dingo camp is a grungy but serviceable affair, a handful of tents that look like military salvage tucked against a rock formation sheltering a few shallow caves. Half a dozen equally grungy men with rifles surround the rig as it pulls up to the camp.

Furiosa steps down from the rig like she owns the Wasteland, seeming completely unfazed by the six automatic weapons pointed at her. Max scrambles out of the rig to follow her.

There’s a shout of greeting from a wiry, scarred-up man in a long duster striding out of the nearest cave. He’s grinning a crooked-toothed grin. Max keeps a hand on the pistol under his jacket. 

“So it’s true!” the man crows. “The Bag o’ Nails runnin’ the Citadel!”

“Biltong,” Furiosa replies coolly. “Last I saw, you were second in command.”

The man apparently called Biltong cackles. “So were you!”

He waves them over to the cave, where a couple of ancient and spectacularly stained armchairs and what looks like the back seat of some kind of van have been arranged around a crate serving as a makeshift table.

One of the younger, twitchier guys will not stop staring at Furiosa’s arm, her metal hand gleaming on her hip next to where she’s strapped the flare pistol. Max watches him edge closer to her with something like a suppressed growl in his throat.

The smeg gets so far as to actually reach out a hand to touch a hydraulic line before Furiosa turns around to glare at him. “Put a hand on me and you’ll lose it.” She doesn’t raise her voice but the guy skitters back. She jerks her chin in Max’s direction. “Same with him.”

Biltong slouches into a threadbare armchair, three of the guards arranging themselves behind him. Furiosa settles herself on the van seat, shoulders back and one leg crossed over the other. There’s no way Max is about to sit; he ends up standing behind her, every instinct on a hair trigger.

“Heard some people sayin’ you done a coup, but, ehh…ya hear all sorts of things in the Wasteland.”

“I’m sure you do.” Furiosa reaches for her belt, and a few hands twitch nervously toward triggers, but all she does is take a small bottle of Citadel water from a pouch. She takes a sip from it, then tosses it to Biltong. “To self-made promotions.”

Biltong cackles and takes a swig from the bottle.

Furiosa looks supremely calm, one arm slung over the back of the seat in a way Max can’t help noticing highlights the definition in her bicep and shoulder. “What else have you heard lately?”

Biltong wags a finger. “Eh, you know that ain’t free. How ‘bout a nice wheel a dat titty cheese for a few choice tidbits?”

They don’t have any Milk Mother cheese, not since the Milkers decided to produce only enough for the Citadel’s children and sick.

“How about you consider it an advance,” Furiosa replies. “A sign of good faith in our continuing relationship.”

Biltong gives her a greasy smile. “Ain’t made no deal yet.”

“You wouldn’t waste my time, though. Would you?”

“Citadel’s under new management. Far as I’m concerned, negotiatin’ conditions is back to square one.”

“You’re right,” Furiosa says. “New boss, new terms. From now on you’ll be dealing exclusively to the Citadel.”

Biltong snorts, but manages to turn it into a cough. “Hey, hey. That’s not on. We gotta right to free ‘n fair competition. Invisible hand o’ the market ‘n all that.”

Furiosa curls her very visible, metallic hand into a fist, and Biltong can’t stop his gaze from flicking to it for a moment.

“We know you’ve been trading with the Buzzards and the cannibal tribes to the north,” Furiosa says. Max knows she’s not thinking about the Buzzards or the Skin Eaters, but about roiling, unstable Gastown, right on their own doorstep, and the Bullet Farm, metal-toothed makers of their own weapons who still can’t resist accumulating more.

“We’d like our enemies to be less well-armed. And you can’t drink grenades. We’ll take an exclusive deal, or nothing.”

Biltong is sputtering, angry at being flipped so quickly out of the position of power in his own camp. “Now you— Just a hot damn minute, now. Just cause you got dem skeleton boys lickin’ your ass don’t mean you get to push us free agents around—”

Furiosa uses her flesh hand to beckon Max to lean down next to her. He tries to keep eyes on as many guys as he can while he does it.

“I think he needs a reminder of his negotiating position,” she says, a hot rush of breath in his ear that would still be loud enough for Biltong to hear if he were paying attention to anything but his own rant, but he’s not.

Max knows how to be quick when he wants to be. Biltong gets “You got no right—” out and then he’s cut off by Max hoisting him up against the back wall of the cave by his throat. His feet scramble for purchase an inch off the ground by the overturned chair, and Max hears three guns click behind him, but Biltong is already holding up a frantic hand to stay them.

“I have the only right,” Furiosa says coldly. “The one that can be enforced.”

She lets the moment spin out just a breath longer before she says, “Enough.” Max releases his hold immediately, leaving Biltong bent over, red-faced and coughing.

Max doesn’t move, just in case the guy is about to try something, but Biltong is waving at his guards to stand down. He rearranges his grubby shirt where it’s been yanked sideways. “’Bout we lay off the attack dog, War Bitch? Supposed to be conductin’ business here.” 

Furiosa shows no reaction to the change in epithet, and Biltong is apparently smart enough, or greedy enough, to favor a deal over his pride, because after a moment he picks the overturned chair up and sits back down. 

Furiosa beckons Max back over to her, and there’s not much acting involved in slouching over the back of the seat behind her and leveling a glare at the lot of them. Her flesh hand reaches up for him again, finding his face without looking, and this time she actually twists her fingers into his hair, blatant and possessive in a way she never is in public. It sends a sudden and horribly distracting spike of lust through him. Her gaze never wavers from her target.

“Let’s start over.”

They haggle, arguing quantities of water and produce for salvage and loyalty. Max doesn’t pay attention to the details much, keeping tabs on the position of guards while trying to shove his thoughts away from the feeling of her fingers in his hair.

Finally a deal is reached, sealed with spit on palms and a handshake in which Max is quite sure Furiosa squeezes harder than is strictly necessary. She stands up with a sudden fluid motion he knows makes her ribs grind—almost winces in sympathy at—but not a trace of pain shows on her face. “Let’s see the goods,” she says.

 

Biltong leads them over to a stack of crates stamped with faded lettering—Max thinks it’s Russian—and slides the lid off one of them. The RPGs nestled end-to-end inside are a bit dusty but seem otherwise untouched.

Furiosa is taking some small dark objects out of a pouch. When she presses two of them into his hand he realizes they’re earplugs, little nubs made out of some kind of scrap rubber. He’s not sure why he finds this jarringly funny, but he has to bite back a laugh.

The launcher is leaning against the crate. Furiosa picks it up like she knows what she’s doing.

Biltong has a rocket in his hand. “Can have a go at that bit o’ scrap out there,” he says, gesturing out into the desert. There’s a rusted hulk of what might have once been a car maybe two hundred meters out across the flat plain, long since stripped of anything useful.

“Y’know, if you think you can hit it,” he adds with manufactured casualness.

Furiosa gives him a flat look and hefts the launcher onto her shoulder. “Bottle of ‘shine against that blade on your belt says I can hit it on the first try.”

There’s an explosion of laughter from Biltong’s crew and Furiosa uses the moment to lean close to Max and whisper, “Need your help with this.”

She gestures with her metal hand for Biltong to hand her the rocket. He gets out, “Need a rocket in yer—“ before Max snatches it from him and loads the launcher for her.

She’s got her feet planted, adjusting the sights like she does this every day. “Stand on my left,” she tells Max. “Closer,” she says, until he’s nearly touching her, close enough to smell the oiled leather of her prosthetic harness and a faint whiff of salt off her skin.

“Put your hand on the tube, right behind my shoulder.” He reaches across the span of her shoulders to steady the tube. He is close enough that it’s logical to put his other hand on her waist, and she doesn’t do anything to indicate that he should move it. He’s instantly, powerfully reminded of another moment, the two of them and a weapon and the sudden completion of an electric circuit of trust, a momentary jolt of current that had made him tingle every time his thoughts had strayed back to it for hundreds of days after.

At least he has earplugs this time.

The guys are still laughing and joking on her other side. She is busy lining up her shot, her whole attention focused like a predator on the weapon and the target. The black grease makes the brilliant green of her eyes stand out, the jut of her cheekbones and the sharp line of her jaw. 

He feels her breathe out, slow and steady, go completely still against him. This is a terrible time to think about how fucking hot she looks.

The explosion roars, deafening even with the earplugs, a sonic punch in the chest, a blast of heat and light behind him and a kick up of the tube into his hand. The scrap car vanishes in a plume of sand.

He feels more than hears Furiosa suck in a sharp breath of pain, but when the sand settles there’s a hole in the front passenger door of the car, the metal punched through like rotten fruit.

Biltong’s crew whoop with appreciation, while Biltong grumbles and unstraps the knife from his belt. Furiosa turns to him, a satisfied smirk on her face. “What d’you say, double or nothing?”

“Not necessary.” He holds the knife out, suddenly all oily deference.

She nods her head toward the truck. “Have your men load the crates in the hold. Show me where you want the water.”

There’s a flurry of activity as Biltong’s crew load the crates into the Citadel rig and back up the battered ute that holds their water tank until it’s close enough to reach the hose from the rig’s tank.

They’re loading the third crate when he notices Furiosa tense up beside him. He looks closer and sees what she must have: a thin but unmistakable trail of sand running out of the bottom of the crate.

“Wait,” Furiosa says. “Put that crate down.”

Just like that, there’s a frisson of tension in the air. Max shoots a glance at Biltong, standing a few paces behind them, and catches him nervously licking his lips. He slips a hand into his jacket and finds the grip of his pistol again.

The men put the crate down.

“Open it.” Max registers their split-second of hesitation, and he’s sure Furiosa does too.

One of the men gets a crowbar and pries the lid off the box. A neat row of RPGs in protective padding, just like the crate Biltong opened.

Furiosa crosses the distance to the box in two strides and kicks it over. Underneath the flimsy board holding up the top layer of explosives is nothing but sand, which pours out along with the shells of several disassembled rockets, long since stripped of their primers and explosive charges.

Furiosa turns around slowly, fixing Biltong with a glare that could melt through sheet metal.

For the space of a single breath the scene is frozen. Then everyone reaches for their guns.

Max is fast but Furiosa is faster than all of them, her pistol aimed at Biltong’s head before most of his men can draw. “Don’t. Move,” she growls at the men still shifting around behind her. She presses her pistol into Biltong’s forehead. He swallows, eyes squeezed shut, hands held out impotently at his sides, away from his weapons. She’s taller than him.

“What the fuck did you think you were doing?” Her voice is low and deadly, every line of her body etched with tightly coiled power. Max is caught between watching her back and watching her.

“G-gotta understand,” Biltong stammers. “Real bad season. Trade all disrupted, what wit’ Gastown lieutenants all killin’ each other every other week. G-got mouths t’feed back at base camp, y’know.” He sneaks a glance at Furiosa, maybe a last futile hope for mercy, but lowers his gaze quickly again.

“And you thought the Citadel would make an easy target for a quick swindle.” Her voice is still quiet, a rumble of held-back power like the idle of a turbo-charged engine, and it makes Max shiver. “Why on earth would you think that?”

“Dunno.” Biltong has his eyes squeezed shut again. “S-stupid’, really. Insultin’ to your—”

BANG.

It happens so fast Max hardly registers it, but a whisper of smoke is drifting from the barrel of Furiosa’s pistol and a guy who had been standing by the ute is sprawled in the dirt, a spray of blood on the vehicle door and his brains leaking onto the sand, the little Derringer he’d pulled from somewhere lying an inch from his limp fingers.

“Anyone else?” Furiosa’s voice cracks like a whip, hard-edged with command, suddenly loud enough that the breath she took for it must have hurt her.

She’s back to pointing the gun at Biltong’s forehead; he hadn’t even thought to use the split second of distraction to duck.

“I should burn this camp to the ground, and then I should find your base camp and burn that too.”

“P-please,” Biltong gibbers. “There’s kids there, they ain’t done nothin’—”

“Shut up,” Furiosa barks, and his mouth closes with a snap.

Max sees her take a shuddery breath, probably not as deep or as steadying as she would have liked.

“New deal,” she growls. “You will get in your cars right now and you will drive away from here, and when you reach your camp you will pack it up and keep driving. And you will consider it a bargain for trying to cheat the Citadel.”

Biltong swallows hard.

“If you ever sell anything to an enemy of the Citadel, I _will_ find you.” She jabs the barrel of the gun against his forehead. “Move!”

They scramble, Biltong almost tripping over his own feet on the way to the nearest car. A few possessions get hastily stuffed into cars but they don’t bother packing up most of the camp. When one of them reaches for the dead man by the ute Furiosa yells, “Leave the body!”

In the space of a couple of minutes their cars are vanishing trails of dust.

Furiosa has let the gun drop to her side. She holsters it with a wince. “Schlangers,” she sighs. She pulls a bit of scrap cloth from a pouch on her belt and swipes at the grease on her face.

She draws the flare pistol from her other side, loads a white flare, the all-clear, and fires it into the sky.

Max feels the fight adrenaline abruptly dissipate, and he sits down heavily next to her on one of the crates. He wonders how many of the crates are full of sand, if any of the rockets other than the one Biltong handed her will fire.

She steps close to him, and for a moment it’s just the two of them, and she doesn’t stop him from pressing his face against the leather of her belts. This close he can hear the rasp that still lingers in her breath.

“Someone always gotta try to fuck you over,” she mutters. Her fingers run through his hair.

There’s a sudden roar of approaching vehicles, and for a split second he feels her fingers tighten against his scalp, protective-possessive. But it’s just the Citadel outrider vehicles coming around the dune.

She steps away from him, all business as the Citadel vehicles pull up. She has a few words with her War Boy lieutenant and then they set about stripping anything useful from among what was left behind at the camp. Three of the four crates turn out to have only a single layer of rockets on top of a pile of sand; the fourth has two layers but the bottom one looks like it’s mostly been disassembled. Furiosa has them load the rockets into the truck anyway. “Maybe we can use them for parts,” she mutters.

The dead body of one of Biltong’s mates is still lying sprawled on the ground. “Help me with him,” she says to Max. He doesn’t know what she’s planning but he helps her drag the body over to the rock wall beside the little cave, leaving a good bit of his brains on the sand behind them. He can see her gritting her teeth in pain the whole time, but whatever she’s doing, he doesn’t think she’ll let him do it for her.

She drags the chair Biltong was sitting in over to the rock wall and together they heave the body up into it. It’s only when the corpse is sitting propped up in the chair, eyes and mouth open in eternal shock, that Max realizes it’s the twitchy bloke who tried to touch Furiosa’s arm. On closer inspection he’s very young, maybe even a teenager still.

To have something to do other than look at his face, Max starts poking around the seating area for anything worth salvaging.

“Cheated—is it E-E or E-A?” Furiosa asks from over his shoulder.

“Why?” he mutters before he looks over and sees that she’s written CH on the rock wall above the body in what looks like black Imperator grease.

“Because it’s fucking _useless_ if you can’t use it to send a message,” she snaps, not looking at him.

“E-A.”

He watches her daub out CHEATED THE CITADEL over the body, the exit wound steadily soaking the back of the chair with blood. Soon the crows and other scavengers will find it, and before long it will be nothing more than a skeleton and a warning.

 

She’s quiet on the drive back to the Citadel, a different kind of quiet than she was on the way there.

“Would you really have burnt the base camp down?” he asks at some point.

“And then some,” she says. “Back then.”

“And now?”

“Doesn’t matter. Back then is who they know me as. Sometimes that’s better.”

 

It’s dusk by the time they reach the Citadel. She’s starting to let go, a little, of the rigorous way she controls every facet of how she presents herself: the way she moves, the way she speaks, what shows on her face. As it peels away she just looks tired underneath.

In her room they undress by lamplight. She scrubs the grease aggressively off her face, claws off her prosthetic and strips down to just her skin and the tight wrap around her ribs in the time it takes him to take off his brace and jacket. She does grudgingly let him help her with her boots, after he prods her to sit down.

She hisses in a sharp breath of pain as he unwraps her ribs. “I know, I know,” he murmurs. When he presses a cloth soaked in fresh, cold aquifer water over the place where it hurts the most she flat-out whimpers with relief. She lists against his bare chest, tucks her face against his neck and lets him hold her close.

“Least we had a bit of fun, right?” she mumbles against his skin. She looks up, twining her fingers into his hair. “When you were pretending to be my muscle.” She gives his hair a playful tug.

It hadn’t really mattered; in the end it was her reputation, and her gun, that had been needed to get the job done. She doesn't have to say anything about the years of fire and blood that went into being able to threaten a pack of rough men like that and have them believe her. Or about how the shadow of that person following her around might be the only way to protect this new, softer one currently resting in his arms.

Her hand leaves his hair and trails lightly over his chest and stomach, down to his hip. She wants distraction, as he expected, and he wouldn’t mind something to take the jagged edge off the lingering adrenaline.

For the better part of a fortnight they’d been too sick and overworked to do anything in her room together but sleep. He’s still wary about her healing ribs, but she’s impatient and he can’t stop his thoughts drifting back to her hand in his hair, her body taut against his as she aimed the grenade launcher. When she presses her thumb into the tender spot by his hipbone he leans in and kisses her.

She bites his lip, a wordless command to fang it, but he makes them go slow, cupping her jaw and doing nothing but kissing her until her breath is hot and needy against his face. The wet cloth has long since heated up between their bodies, and he lets it fall to the floor so he has both hands for soft languid touches up and down her skin.

When he slips a hand between her legs she makes the same kind of whimper as when he pressed the cold cloth to her side, the relief of a different kind of ache. She is hot and slick against his hand, and she presses her face against his neck again and lets him stroke her until he gets a shudder and a disarmed little trail of _ohh_ s out of her.

He’s gotten hard by then, and he’d be perfectly fine with her finishing him off with her hand, or doing it himself, but she says, “I think against the wall will work,” and then she’s tugging him back against her, her body between his and the cool stone of the wall. With her leg hooked around his hip he fits easily inside her, and he’s as careful as he can be, one hand braced on the wall to keep his weight from pressing on her. Normally he would hide his face against her shoulder but the cautious way he’s holding himself lets her catch him unawares, snag his chin and make him look at her. She is sweaty and lovely and smiling and he is overwhelmed before he knows it.

She still winces when she pushes off the wall after he’s spent, hangs sleepily onto him while he wipes her clean, goes into the alcove to piss with a hand braced against her ribs. She needs help getting down to the pile of pillows on the low mattress, stacked to make sleeping a little easier, and she lets him help her, hums appreciatively when he brings her another cold compress.

He climbs into bed next to her, pulling the blanket up over both of them against the growing night chill. The last thing she does before closing her eyes is twine her fingers into his hair and use it to tug him closer to her.

**Author's Note:**

> Come say hi on [Tumblr!](http://fuckyeahisawthat.tumblr.com)


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